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UW Libraries Continue to Grow

January 25, 2012 — It's been a little more than two years since the opening of the
major addition and renovation of the University of Wyoming's William Robertson
Coe Library. During that time, the library has continued to grow in its
collections and use by UW students, faculty and staff.

The addition and renovation of Coe Library involved more
than 281,000 square feet and includes 20 group-study rooms and 180 computer
terminals. Located east of the existing library, the 94,500-square-foot
addition is designed to shelve a capacity of 1.4 million books.

New spaces within Coe Library, designed to reflect students'
learning styles, include flexible study space, quiet study spaces and the
integration of technology with instruction services. Students have taken
advantage of the computer lab, which is open almost on a daily basis, even up
to 24 hours at a time during most school days.

An improved facility is only part of UW Libraries' growth. Collections
also are an integral part of what will make the library system even better.

Maggie Farrell, UW Libraries dean, says the library system
focuses its collection on the university's curriculum and research needs. University
Libraries' collections include an extensive media collection of films,
television programming and music. This collection supports the inclusion of
media in teaching and student projects.

"Unquestionably, the resources of the UW libraries are used
every day by researchers -- both faculty and students -- but the collections
fall short of those found at research libraries at comparable universities, and
that has a direct effect on competitiveness," Farrell says. "Research in the
field shows a strong relationship between the size of a university's research
collection and its success in securing research grants."

She says the libraries anticipate adding approximately
24,000 to 60,000 books to the collection annually and significantly increasing
electronic book collections. In addition, the library will add new electronic journals to meet the
teaching and research needs of the university.

In planning to expand the collections, UW Libraries continue
to pursue membership in the Great Western Library Alliance (GWLA), a consortium
of 32 research libraries in the Midwest and West. Membership is a hallmark of
quality for research collections.

"One of the benchmarks a research library must meet is the
size of collection. Smaller universities with GWLA membership have collections
of about two million volumes; larger universities have more," Farrell says.

Currently, UW has about 1.5 million volumes, and the
university is seeking additional collection funding to provide teaching and
research tools comparable to those at other research universities.

"The goal of additional funding is to build a national-caliber
library environment to support UW's teaching and research missions," Farrell
says.

Collection funding will enable UW to enhance library
collections that support undergraduate and graduate student learning; improve
research collections for faculty, including attracting and retaining top-tier
instructors; and provide an infrastructure that supports faculty endowed
chairs through recruitment of nationally known scholars coming from
academic institutions with research libraries. In addition, the Wyoming
State Library, county libraries and the community college libraries can
partner to build a statewide information infrastructure that will support
economic development, energy research and development, and education for
lifelong learning.

Memberships in the GWLA and the Association of Research
Libraries (ARL) are benchmarks in determining how UW compares with similar
research universities, Farrell adds. Some of the benefits in GWLA are free and
priority interlibrary loans with other GWLA research libraries; significant
discount on purchasing scholarly resources negotiated by GWLA; collaborative
training opportunities; grant support for joint projects; and digital
initiatives funded by GWLA.

Recent funding for UW Libraries was supported by students through
a two-year, 5 percent tuition increase -- half of which is dedicated to
libraries, Farrell says.

"But the full bill cannot realistically be borne by
students," she says. "Additional state funding is required to continue to work
on the university goal of developing a pre-eminent research library comparable
with notable research universities of the West."

Photo:UW Libraries continue to pursue membership in the Great
Western Library Alliance, a consortium of 32 research libraries in the Midwest
and West. Membership is a hallmark of quality for research collections. (UW
Photo)